If you think email marketing as a tool is a worn out concept, give it a second chance! Email marketing is almost as old as email itself, but it is still a vital method. Email marketing is always advancing through the development of new strategies and techniques that keep emails interesting and effective. Keep reading to find out how you can design a successful email marketing campaign.
Be especially careful when crafting your first three emails to new customers. A new customer should get an introductory email inviting them to join your marketing list. Once they accept your invitation, the next email should tell them about discounts or special offers they can expect to get now that they’ve signed up. The third email should contain their first newsletter and their special offer.
Your email marketing campaign will be more effective if you make it easy for customers to unsubscribe. This may seem paradoxical, but people will tend to trust you more if you make them feel as if they are in control. Post the unsubscribe link in an obvious place so they can find it easily.
Email marketing can be made more effective by giving your customers options. Allow your subscribers to choose the number of messages they would like to receive and how often, as well as what information they want to disclose. Giving control to the subscriber will make them feel more comfortable. They will be more likely to sign up.
For your email marketing campaigns to be truly effective, every message needs a clear call to action. For example, if you are promoting a new product then you should encourage customers to go directly to that product’s page. On the other hand, if you are promoting a new sale then you should clearly explain how customers can take advantage of that sale.
Try following up with a product review when sending a follow-up email to your clients. You could insert a link onto your email that informs them to enroll by clicking on this link. The ending P.S. on the message could urge them to take advantage of this opportunity that you are providing them.
Collecting and analyzing statistics is as important to the success of an email marketing campaign as it is to a business website. Invest in software that allows you to track the effectiveness of every email, from what percentage of your emails are actually opened to how many result in unsubscriptions.
To make your emails look as professional as possible, invest a little thought in their design. Use a consistent layout, color scheme, and logo with all of your messages. This gives your subscribers the impression that they are hearing from a trustworthy, authoritative source. They will pay more attention and give your content more credence this way.
Your emails should be readable sans images. Many email providers disable images by default, and unless the user changes their settings, they will not be able to see any images you include. Because of this, any images you include in the emails that you send should also be followed by comprehensive text.
Make responding promptly to emails your top priority. If a potential customer reaches out to you through email, you ought to do everything you can to reply to them within one day. Waiting longer may cost you the customer, and they may mention the lack of response to others.
Getting permission to send emails is not difficult to get. You can use discounts, coupons, special offers and even flyers given out in trade shows to get customers interested enough to receive your emails. They can sign up on your website among other methods. By being friendly and offering a good incentive to sign up, customers may even give you access to personal information and their personal preferences.
One way to keep your email readers engaged is to ask them questions. These should not be rhetorical questions, either. Provide a feedback channel they can use to send you answers. You could ask for direct replies via email, or send your readers to your social networking pages. However you arrange it, asking for two-way communication is a great way to cultivate loyalty in your subscribers.
Research shows that there are three emails that are the most important. The first offers an introduction and invitation to sign up and give permission to receive further communication. The second presents the customer with specific expectations such as coupons, discount offers or newsletters. The third email would deliver those expectations in the form of the discounts and other incentives.
Apply a consistent and professional color scheme to your email marketing campaign. Nothing will strike a more visual chord in your subscriber’s minds. Think to your personal favorite brands, and their colors come to mind readily. Search your favorite Internet search engine for color schemes, and you can quickly find one appropriate for your industry, or even distinct within it.
Use Alt tags for images in email. What these tags do is come in place of images that don’t load or aren’t allowed to load for some reason. Make sure that the description you use is accurate and informative. Make sure you include tags in your links.
Respect for your subscribers has to be the cornerstone of your email marketing efforts. One way to show this respect is to limit your frequency of communication with them. Familiarity breeds plenty of other negative traits besides contempt! Limit yourself to two or three emails per subscriber per month. If you communicate more often, you risk losing readers’ interest and becoming background noise.
As you’ve seen, email marketing has a lot of life remaining. Taking the above into consideration, email marketing can work for you, too. There’s no limit to the success you can achieve by implementing it.
